Final URL expansion is an opt-in, campaign-level setting that is available through AI Max for Search Campaigns. To send traffic to the most relevant URLs on your domain when it’s likely to result in better performance, enable “Final URL expansion”. Final URL expansion will only send traffic to URLs that are query relevant and themed to your ad group.
On this page
- Set up Final URL expansion in a new Search campaign
- Set up Final URL expansion in an existing Search campaign
- How to exclude URLs
- How to apply URL Inclusions
- Use page feeds with Final URL expansion
- How the landing page logic works within Search Campaigns for Travel
Set up Final URL expansion in a new Search campaign
- Go to the Create button
and click Campaign.
- Create a new Search campaign.
- When you reach the “AI Max” page, toggle to opt-in to AI Max settings.
- Final URL expansion is turned on by default when you opt in to AI Max.
and click Campaign.Set up Final URL expansion in an existing Search campaign
- Go to Settings within the Campaigns menu
.
- Click the Search campaign you’d like to update.
- Click AI Max in the section menu.
- Turn on AI Max if it isn’t already on.
- Note: To turn on AI Max, toggle the button for “Optimize your campaign with AI Max”. Text customization and Final URL expansion settings will be enabled by default.
- If AI Max is already enabled but Final URL expansion is not, under “Asset optimization”, select the Final URL expansion checkbox to turn on the setting.
- Note: In order to use the “Final URL expansion” setting, “Text customization” must be enabled. Turning off “Text customization” will also turn off “Final URL expansion”.
- Turn on AI Max if it isn’t already on.
- Select Save.
- When both Text customization (formerly known as automatically created assets) and Final URL expansion settings are turned on, Google may replace your Final URL with a more relevant landing page based on the user’s search query, and generate a dynamic headline, description, and additional assets to match your landing page content. Learn more About text customization in Search campaigns.
- It’s recommended to turn on both Text customization and Final URL expansion settings.
- When Final URL expansion is turned on for your campaign, pinned Responsive search ad assets aren’t used if a more relevant URL is chosen, because they may not match the customer’s intent. Similarly, when URL inclusions are enabled, pinned assets aren’t used. To always use pinned assets, turn off Final URL expansion and URL inclusions.
| URL inclusions | Final URL expansion | Responsive Search ad (RSA) pinned asset serving |
| Pinned RSA assets will serve as expected | ||
| Pinned RSA assets will not be respected |
How to exclude URLs
URL exclusions allow you to exclude URLs from serving in Final URL expansion. URL exclusions requires Text customization and Final URL expansion to be turned on.
- Go to Settings within the Campaigns menu
- Click the Search campaign you’d like to update.
- Scroll down to the AI Max section and select it to expand the section.
- Ensure the AI Max toggle is on.
- Note: AI Max must be enabled to use URL exclusion.
- Under "Final URL expansion", select Add URL exclusions.
- In the “Add URL exclusions” slider panel, list the URLs that you want to exclude in the URLs tab, then select Add.
- Note: To use rules to exclude URLs, select the Rules tab to add your custom rules. Then select Add.
- Select Apply to close the slider panel, then Save in the “AI Max” section.
How to apply URL Inclusions
Google AI selects the best performing landing page from your website. Utilize URL inclusions to include URLs that were not captured by final URL expansion. Learn more about how to use URL inclusions.- Select the relevant campaign and navigate to Ad groups.
- Scroll down to AI Max and click Add URL inclusions.
- Click Save after adding the relevant URL inclusions
Use page feeds with Final URL expansion
You can provide a feed of URLs for your Search campaign to use. Page feeds complement Google’s automated understanding of what products and services advertisers should be using when Final URL expansion is enabled. To target specific feed URLs with Final URL Expansion enabled, use custom labels for campaign-level URL exclusion or ad-group-level inclusions. Learn more about How to use page feeds.
How the landing page logic works for Travel Promotion Ads & Booking Links within Search Campaigns for Travel
Based on the current Search Campaigns for Travel configuration, the relationship between your targeting settings and your landing pages is highly specific. While features like Final URL expansion and URL rules are used to find the right audience, the Feed remains the "single source of truth" for the final destination for Travel formats (Travel promotion ads and Booking Links).
The "Feed-First" landing page rule
A critical feature of Search Campaigns for Travel is that landing pages are always pulled directly from the feed (for Travel promotion ads and booking links ). Even when using advanced AI Max targeting features, the system defaults to the URLs provided in your travel data:
- Final URL expansion : While Final URL expansion is enabled and used to identify traffic relevant to your intent, the actual landing page shown will still be the one specified in your feed.
- Targeting vs. Destination: AI Max uses your website content and URL rules to decide where to show the ad, but it sends users to the Feed Item’s landing page.
How URL rules interact with the Feed
Search Campaigns for Travel allows you to use standard Search campaign rules to refine your targeting, but these don’t override the feed's destination logic:
- URL inclusion rules: These are used as a targeting mechanism to help the AI understand which parts of your site are relevant to the search. However, the resulting click will still land on the feed-provided URL.
- URL exclusion rules: You can use these to prevent the AI from using certain pages for targeting, for example, "Privacy Policy" or "Blog" pages. Note that if a feed item happens to point to a URL you've "excluded" in the settings, the feed item remains the priority. The exclusion rule only prevents the AI from using that page to find new search terms.
Location of Interest and brand terms
- Precision matching: Because Search Campaigns for Travel supports Location of Interest and brand search terms (brand inclusion), the system can match a specific intent, for example, a branded search for a hotel in a specific city, directly to a feed item.
- Note: Branded Search Terms are available for Text Ads and Travel Promotion Ads (not Booking Links, which are entirely targeted based on the feed)
- Dynamic delivery: When the match is made, the feed pulls the exact landing page for that specific property or activity, ensuring that the end user doesn’t have to navigate from the user’s homepage to find what the user searched for.
